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The Gamer Goldmine

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One thing has been clear in mobile advertising for a while - marketers don’t need to be
told to invest in it any more. After all, according to
eMarketer, the industry looks like it will be bigger than $100bn in 2016. On the one hand, that’s great
as it means brands are already making the right moves by getting on board and
running their campaigns through the medium. But then, on the other hand, the
growth of the mobile advertising space means it’s become such a vast area to
invest in, that it’s difficult for them to know exactly where to invest. With
so many different types of applications being developed and launched every day,
a marketer has a job not only to understand which applications are best to
advertise through to reach their target audience, but which ones will actually
result in engagement from the customer.

How are they supposed to
decide? Well, naturally, the purpose of the application will go a long way to
determining the audience’s engagement rate, as some mobile apps are specifically
there for when users are looking to be driven to distraction, while others are
jumped into as a reference point – to get an answer or an update. The mobile
user is in to the app and then out again as soon as they’ve found what they’re
looking for, with no room for being waylaid.

So which kind of application
offers the best advertising opportunity for brands looking to get the most out
of their investment? Obviously, if you want someone to actually interact and
engage with your advert, then you’ll be targeting them when they are in a state
of mind to be distracted. And the best examples of these applications
are…Gaming applications. Gaming applications are built to entertain when the
user is looking for something to do. In games, users are usually in a
time-wasting mode, as opposed to when they are in content-based apps which, as
mentioned above, is when they are trying to find a specific task/piece of
information. For this reason, games actually have far higher ad engagement
rates than other popular apps.

Take a recent study by MediaBrix for example. When looking at
consumer attitudes to ads across different types of apps, they found that
mobile games have engagement rates 543 times higher than one of the most
popular mobile apps out there – Facebook. And if you think about how games
work, it makes even more sense that they offer engagement for advertisers.
Whether playing a platform game or a simple arcade game, most scenarios include
in-between stages, or ‘Game Over’ situations where the consumer can be targeted
before they get engrossed in another round or start a new level – so give them
a well-placed ad to interact with at this point in the game.

It sounds simple, but it doesn’t
mean that advertisers should rest on their laurels and be lazy with the
campaigns they are running for gaming apps. Remember there’s a high level of
sophistication around most mobile games, which means that the audience, if they
are looking to be distracted, will want advertising that is going to impress,
or wow them, just as much as the game they are playing, rather than just being
a banner ad, or something static and not interactive. Along these lines, the
advertiser needs to make sure they are serving something that is relevant – and
for the content involved to actually resonate with each individual user, rather
than assuming the gaming audience should all be targeted in the same way. As
much as they are looking for distraction, the advert has to be something that
will still lure a gamer away from their game, rather than something untargeted,
outdated and irrelevant to them.

It’s an old adage that ‘the
Devil makes work for idle thumbs’, but learning where to take advantage of that
as a marketer can make the difference between whether or not your ad resonates,
or if you’re quite simply serving it to an audience who really isn’t interested
in being distracted. Gamers are looking for something to do – and a well-placed
ad with your message at the right time is a great way to get them on-board with
your brand.

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